how may I help you?’ stopped short of making my ears bleed. Needless to say, they were as misleading as the building’s façade. After I’d given them my card, asked for Michael Haroun and told them his department, I still had to kick my heels for ten minutes while they ran their debriefing on the weekend’s romantic encounters, rang Mr Haroun, filled out a visitor’s pass and told me Mr Haroun would be waiting for me at the lift.
I emerged on the fifth floor to find they’d been economical with the truth. There was no Mr Haroun, and no one behind the desk marked ‘Claims Inquiries’ either. Before I could decide which direction to head in, a door down the hallway opened and someone backed out, saying, ‘And I want to compare those other cases. Karen, dig out the files, there’s a love.’
He swivelled round on the balls of his feet and déjà vu swept over me. Confused, I just stood and stared as he walked towards me. When he got closer, he held out his hand and said, ‘Ms Brannigan? Michael Haroun.’
For a moment, I was speechless and paralysed. I must have been gawping like a starving goldfish, for he frowned and said, ‘You are Ms Brannigan?’ Then, suspicion appeared in his liquid sloe eyes. ‘What’s the matter? Am I not what you expected? I can assure you, I am head of the claims division.’
Power returned to my muscles and I hurriedly reached out and shook his hand. ‘Sorry,’ I stammered. ‘Yes, I…Sorry, you’re the spitting image of…somebody,’ I stumbled on. ‘I was just taken aback, that’s all.’
He gave me a look that told me he’d already decided I was either a racist pig or I didn’t have all my chairs at home. His smile was strained as he said, ‘I didn’t realize I had a doppelgänger. Shall we go through to my office and talk?’
Wordlessly, I nodded and followed his broad shoulders back down the hall. He moved like a man who played a lot of sport. It wasn’t hard to imagine him in the same role as I’d first seen his likeness.
When I was about fourteen, we’d gone on a school trip to the British Museum. I’d been so engrossed in the Rosetta Stone, I’d got separated from the rest of the group and wandered round for ages looking for them. That’s how I stumbled on the Assyrian bas-reliefs. As soon as I saw them, I understood for the first time in my life that it wasn’t entirely bullshit when critics said that great art speaks directly to us. These enormous carvings of the lion hunt didn’t so much speak as resonate inside my chest like the bass note of an organ. I fell in love with the archers and the charioteers, their shoulder-length hair curled as tight as poodle fur, their profiles keen as sparrowhawks. I must have spent an hour there that day. Every time I went to London on shopping trips after that, I always found an excuse to slip away from my mates as they trawled Oxford Street so I could nip to the museum for a quick tryst with King Ashurbanipal. If Aslan had come along and breathed life into the carving of the Assyrian king, he would have walked off the wall looking just like Michael Haroun, his glowing skin the colour of perfect roast potatoes. OK, so he’d swapped the tunic for a Paul Smith shirt, Italian silk tie and chinos, but you don’t make much progress up the corporate ladder wearing a mini-skirt unless you’re a woman. Just one look at Michael Haroun and I was an adoring adolescent all over again, Richard a distant memory.
I followed Haroun meekly into his office. The opulence of the atrium hadn’t quite made it this high. The furniture was functional rather than designed to impress. At least he overlooked the recently renovated Rochdale Canal (European funding), though the view of the Canal Café must have been a depressing reminder of the rest of the world enjoying itself while he was working. We settled down on the L-shaped sofa at right angles to each other, my adolescent urge to jump on him held in check by the low coffee table between us. Haroun dumped the file he’d been carrying on the table. ‘I hear good things about your agency, Ms Brannigan,’ he said. From his tone, I gathered he couldn’t quite square what he’d heard with my moonstruck gaze.
I forced myself to get a grip and remember I was twice the age of that romantic teenager. ‘You’ve obviously been talking to the clients who haven’t been burgled,’ I said in something approaching my normal voice.
‘No security system is burglar-proof,’ he said gloomily.
‘But some are better than others. And ours are better than most.’
‘That’s certainly how it looked when we first agreed the premium. It’s one of the factors we consider when we set the rate. That and how high-risk the area is.’
‘You don’t have to tell me. My postcode is M13,’ I complained.
He pulled a face and sucked his breath in sharply, the way plumbers are trained to do when they look at your central heating system. ‘And I thought you security consultants made a good living.’
‘It’s not all a hellhole,’ I said sharply.
He held his hands up and grinned. I felt the years slide away again and struggled to stay in the present. ‘Henry Naismith called to say you’d be coming in. He faxed me a preliminary claim,’ he said.
‘I’m investigating the theft on Henry’s behalf, and he thought it might be helpful if we had a chat,’ I said briskly.
‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘Of course, one of our staff investigators will also be looking into it, but I see no reason why we can’t talk to you as well. Can you run it past me?’
I went through everything I’d learned from Henry and Inspector Mellor. Haroun took notes. ‘Just as a matter of interest,’ I finished up, ‘Inspector Mellor mentioned they’d had other burglaries with a similar style. Were any of them insured with you?’
Haroun nodded. ‘Yes, unfortunately. Off the top of my head, I’d say three others in the last nine months. And that’s where we have a problem.’
‘We as in you and me, or we as in Fortissimus?’
‘We as in Mr Naismith and Fortissimus.’
‘Does that mean you’re not going to tell me about it?’
Haroun stared down at the file. ‘Client confidentiality. You should understand that.’
‘I wouldn’t be here if Henry didn’t trust me. Why don’t you give him a call and confirm that you can tell me anything you would tell him? That way, I get it from the horse’s mouth rather than via Chinese whispers.’
His straight brows twitched. ‘Even if he agreed, it wouldn’t be fair of me to have the conversation with you before I have it with him.’
‘So get Henry over. I don’t mind waiting.’ As long as I can keep looking at you, I added mentally.
Haroun inclined his head, conceding. ‘I’ll call him,’ he said.
He was gone for the best part of ten minutes. Instead of fishing a computer magazine out of my shoulder bag, or dictating a report into my microcassette recorder, I daydreamed. What about is nobody’s business but mine.
When Haroun came back, he looked serious. ‘I’ve explained the situation to Mr Naismith, and he was quite insistent that I should discuss the ramifications with you.’
I was too well brought up to say, ‘I told you so,’ but according to Richard I’ve cornered the market in smug smiles. I hoped I wasn’t displaying one of them right then. ‘So, tell me about it,’ I said, locking eyes.
Haroun held my gaze for a long few seconds before turning back to his file. ‘As I said, we’ve had other incidents very similar to this. These thefts have all been from similar properties – medium-sized period properties that are open to the public. In each case, the thieves have broken in as near to the target as they could get. In a couple of cases, they’ve smashed through a window, but in a property like Birchfield Place, that obviously wasn’t appropriate. They ignore the alarms, go straight to the object they’re after, whip it off the wall or out of its case and get out. We estimate the longest they’ve been inside a property is five minutes. In most cases, that’s barely enough time to alert the police or the security guards, never mind get anyone to the site.’